I will not entertain the notion that you are doomed to depression forever because the suffering is the result of an illusion, and if you see through the illusion the perpetual suffering will end. You have already proved to me that you are capable of knowing yourself as the peaceful witness of the mind and world, at least for a few seconds, so your brain is fit for the job. With serious daily practice, you can enjoy longer periods of joy, and the knowledge gained will prevent perpetual suffering, and whenever there is suffering, you will be able to peacefully observe it at will, which allows you to be free of suffering while it’s still there. In the same way that we can be free of a tornado by stepping outside of it and observing it- it doesn’t necessarily have to disappear for us to become free of it. With serious daily meditation practice will be able to experience long periods of joy while running errands in daily life.
What I’ve said is not something to be tried a few times and discarded because it ‘didn’t work’ - the purpose of your daily meditation practice should be to stay as the observer of the negative emotion and the beleifs associated with it. You’ll notice that there are many beliefs that keep the negative emotion going. You may even feel proud to be depressed and defend it because it’s included in the self-image.
During meditation the mind may wander off a lot, and if we believe that we _are_ the mind, it will seem like _we_ wander off, but you’ll see that consciousness never wanders off. Nothing in the world or mind can disturb consciousness in the same way that nothing in a movie can disturb the movie screen.
Observing the untrained-ness of the mind leads to a desire for deeper wisdom, and this leads to taking meditation practice more seriously.
Daily meditation practice will gradually provide the proof that you are the peaceful one who _watches_ the depression. The mind gradually adjusts to this knowledge and so gradually stops giving us negative emotions, because we don’t entertain them. Just like the YouTube algorithm.
For us modern, westernised people who did not become good meditators before the age of 10, avoiding serious daily practice would keep us under the illusion that _we are what we are witnessing_, instead of the peaceful witness, so we’d never truly be at peace. Gradually, meditation becomes the natural state of anybody who takes it seriously, so after a while they’ll no longer need to sit down to practice.
The test for knowing if we should continue to sit down for daily meditation practice: “Do I still suffer?”
The purpose of meditation: if we can be happy doing nothing, we can be happy doing anything!